Saturday, November 13, 2010

I met Aleks Krotski the other day. She came to Google for a talk I gave about the Google Creative Lab as part of Internet Week Europe and afterwards we had a chat. Paul got Charles Arthur, so I am counting this as a win. You can hear it here:
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Overall Internet Week was a very very strange week... I was interviewed by the Guardian, introduced the Creative Lab, ran a three hour coding workshop for non-coders, got sworn at by Bob Geldof, was photographed looking like a marxist at Mother, was screen-tested by the BBC and got hit by a car ... and my day job was quite busy too.

"who knows what a server is?" (45 blank faces despite the slide on the screen)
"No one? Good. We're all starting at the same place"

Sometimes, over-enthusiasm gets mistaken for a good idea.
I have given short "HTML for non-engineers" courses at Google a few times and so we decided for Internet Week Europe to pair up with Mel at BBHLabs and bring the idea to the world.
We called it codingfordummi.es

We also decided to try and stick in css, javascript and html5... to see what happens.

The point is not to "teach" HTML or anything like it - but to just open up the engine and have a look, reduce the fear factor, and break down some barriers. The walls between those who code and those who think and those who use are getting unnecessarily high...